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Saturday, February 25, 2006

here and there and back again

Okay, I think that labeling scotch tape as 'invisible' is a misnomer. It should be relabeled as 'Very Nearly Invisible'. How do companies get away with such misrepresentation?!

The blue jays are back. Every year they find their way into the pseudo-flower-box sitting on my back porch. They bury peanuts in it. I don't know where they get the peanuts (or at least the big shells the peanuts come in). They sure like to talk about it though. The flower-box is sporting very young shoots of....chard, I think. Something must have survived over the winter and re-seeded itself. The things never get that big anyway, they're all legs and spindly ones - not much direct sunlight back there.

I received a fabulous CD mix from Christina in the mail last week!



Besides being an awesome mix in the stereo, you see here it can be used to keep my index finger from gnawing at the rest of the others.

Last night Jax and Josie (pictured) dropped by. Jax scored some rubber! She mounted it on blocks of wood and made me stamps! Now I get to carve 'em up. WAY COOL. We are working on an ATC swap for Hooters (owls! owls!) and a book (on owls!) I got after work last night also includes a CD (not being used as an anti-gnawing device). I popped it in the stereo and Josie was entranced. A score of different owl-hoots adn sounds issued forth. She's never reacted that way, ever, to something being piped out of the speakers. It was just great.



I wrote the above this morning before catching the bus to work and now I'm home. They gave me a smashing birthday party at work! I knew I should have brought my camera! Fortuantely a colleague (doesn't that sound oh-so....distinguished?) had hers and she snapped several very fun photos which she will email me soon. Our boss lady (she is SO not a boss lady type) made rice crispie treats...with espresso!! aaaaahh! And date orange muffins to be spread with sour cream. Oh. My. God. Delicious.

So now that I am home, I have opened another piece of mail in the post for my mail art call, received today. (!! exciting!!) A bloke from the UK sent me a VERY interesting bit, 'The Simon Warren Journal Project'. He talks of crows (which I have been drawing lately) and...blue jays. No kidding. And the first journal entry is dated Wed 18 June 2003. The date he sends the journal piece to me is Feb 18. 18s are a prominent number in my life, and I honestly don't go looking for them...they inevitably find ME. The last three places I've been employed at, I've begun on the 18th of a month. Even when I changed departments at the library, my new job last year was offered to me by letter in officiality on the 18th. My car registration expiry is 18 and did you know that there are 18 different kinds of animals in Barnum Animal Cracker boxes? Oh the list goes on and on. Simon is the name I gave the local/community tom cat and Simon is the best-smelling cat in the whole wide world. Thank you Mr. Simon Warren, this is a most gracious gift - a hand-written thought-out, intriguing parcel to receive in the post!

On that note, I bid you all adieu...I need a walk to loosen up my back. I will save the rest of Mr. Simon's journal to savor when I return.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

we go walking in the park and reminiscing...

Good god! I need a personal secretary to manage all my projects. And I need a personal architect to build an addition to my apartment so I have more room for all my art materials and ME. My home is bulging at the seams and me brain it's bursting - in a good way. Lots of fun to be had at Nervousness and ATCard forums and I've also initiated my own deco LMAO (land mail art object)! I didn't know it was a 'deco' until talking with a hostess at ATC. It's a small journal I purchased at the local university art store after my friend Jax sniffed 'em out. There are several of us, home and abroad, who will add to it and pass it on and then it'll come home to me all purty and deco'd. COOL HUH?!

Some updates over at my Screaming Memes Gallery should you care to have a gander!

Am still learning HTML but haven't had too much awfully lot of time to devote to that. Anyone ever see that early 80s show Whiz Kids? I wanted to be like one of them, geeked out and hacking into mainframes.

Am craving salt and grease. My coworker, Charity, and I were discussing heater lamp food and convenience store victuals on friday:
"Yeah, the mozarella sticks...you go to Denny's with your girlfriends and you get the sampler, two with onion rings and one with fries and then you get that array of dips...and even when the sticks have gelled, they are still soooo good - in fact they might even be better."

"Yeah or you go to Kar Kwik (in Utah, where I grew up) after work and get the all-day-long-under-the-heater-lamp beef (maybe, who knows) burrito, deep fried, with JO JOs!!"

"oh GOD yes, when you're teenager you LIVE on jo jos, maybe a glob of coleslaw on the side for your vegetable serving.."

"But don't forget the Slurpees...it's gotta be cola or rootbeer..."

"Nah, pink lemonade! and when it wasn't in the machine, it's was like, a wasted trip! and then they'd have the lame-ass flavors like pina colada or some damned obscurity - they need a standard cherry which everyone will like instead of pina freakin' colada.."

"yeah, yeah - and you scooped them out with those spoon shovel straws!"

"uh uh and they're so sharp on the outside that you'd cut the corners of your mouth every time"

"totally - but they went SO well with cigarettes..."

"way - and you'd sit in your mother's hot car slurping away with one arm hanging out the open window with your cigarette so you wouldn't stink up her car and your arm would get all hot and rashy from resting on the burning door..."

Good times.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

to your heart's content

Looked out the window this morning and what did I see?!



And just a half hour earlier I woke up seeing frost thinking to myself, 'huh. looks like the snow is passing us over this year.' Wah! We get one snow day a year. Maybe. And then, it does this:



Gets all sunny and/or melts straightaway. Oh wait, you can't see the sun yet, but trust me, it did come out and the drifts were no more...I even went for a bike ride in the afternoon sunshine it was so nice out. When I went walking in the snow I almost stuck out my tongue for a flake but then I thought about all the nasty things in the air/water/atmosphere and thought better of it...

That lovely clear roof you are seeing is hand crafted by my friend Jax. She's such a whiz. And my bikes are saved from being weatherbeaten (sogged out).

Did some fun artwork today, to be mailed out by Feb 25th for an ATC swap, check these out:






Really, I gotta learn how to hold the camera straight-on. I haven't a scanner. All my pics give me vertigo until I crop 'em and even then they're kinda skeewampus. But hee hee, these amuse me. I wish that the color variations came through better...if you do a watercolor wash and then sprinkle salt on it while it's still wet, after it dries these really cool patterns set in.

Oh, Happy V Day and all that...I keep forgetting. It's purty low-key around here.

Monday, February 13, 2006

full moon fever!

How dee doo all you fine folk! Meomeo left me a comment but I cannot find Meomeo anywhere. Thanks for commenting and maybe some day we will either advertently or inadvertently exchange mail art! So kiyotei is a guy, huh. Whoopsie! Wonder why I defaulted to feminine?? I mean really, it's amazing even to me who tries to be aware of doing the very thing - I assume 'he' most times.

Anyways....I stepped out the front door for an evening stroll around the butte (I live at the base of said butte-y) and here is what I saw, oooh ahhh....



Now I'm no professional photographer and even though I've had this nifty digicam for a couple months I confess to not making the time to get beyond the basic point and shoot. But...I hope some of the gorgeousness is captured.

So much to learn! I have some of those thick computer books from the library sitting on my bookshelf. Allll about my new Mac OS X, and iLife and god knows what-all else...and now I'm wanting to learn Flash animation.

Check out this chap's animation site - it's whacked and I love it:

David Firth! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Okay it's more than whacked, it's downright disturbing. I still love it. Conceptually and visually stimulating, spot on! I know I put it in my links but it bears repeating.

I realized today how fond I am of rice pasta, mason jars, well-built zippers, and duck quacks. Not to mention sardines. In tomato sauce. Over the rice pasta. With sliced olives and chard. To some, that may be as disturbing as David Firthisms.

adieu...it is time for me to meet Le Couch and snug in for the night.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

I got the fever

Well I found my way out of the rabbit-hole but I can't wait to go back. It's a little world filled with ATCs: Artist Trading Cards. I just made my very firsts and sent them off to a gal in Carlsbad. You can view her webby here.


And I'm putting up a new album over on Yahoo!, which you can have a gander at here! I made several more this evening but they are drying and awaiting photos. Oooh what fun.

I'm sure there is a more user-friendly or stylie environment than Yahoo...maybe Flickr. I'll save that project for another day.

Now have you ever seen such a thing as this:



Get down widdit! Hedgehogs do this thing called self-anointing whenever they, uh, feel the need to. No one really knows why, except that if they smell something new they do it, probably as a form of self-protection. I saw a better one in a book, in which the hedgie was foaming at the mouth and a very very long tongue was protruding from its very very tiny mouth. They are among the very select few animals who can safely lick poison toads. All hail to hedgehogs.